Simple Repairs

Posted on Wed Aug 20th, 2014 @ 6:18pm by Petty Officer 2nd Class Amelia Takethen & Staff Warrant Officer Nexi

Mission: Something Amiss
Location: Nexi's Ship
Timeline: MD2 - 1800

"Hello?' The young Crewman Takethen nervously called out. She had been ordered by the Captain herself to conduct repairs and upgrades on the visitor's ship so she had a cart full of supplies ready for that. She wasn't too confident in some of her work, but she'd do her best. She just needed to find the owner...

Nexi popped her head out of the rear access hatch of the Wandering Star, looking for whoever was calling out. "You another Engineer come to do repairs?" she asked as she walked down the ramp to the bay, looking at the woman and the supplies she had with her.

Another? Had someone else been by without putting it in the maintenance logs? It didn't matter at the time though. Snapping to attention, Amelia introduced herself. "Yes, Ma'am. Crewman Amelia Takethen here at the Captain's order. I'm to repair your replicator, install a proper shower with recycler, and see if there's anything else you might need." As she rattled all that off, she held out a work order PaDD for Nexi to look at.

Nexi took the PaDD and, without looking at any of the information it contained, deleted the work order and handed it back to the Crewman. "Fine, get to work," Nexi said sharply.

Looking at the now blank PaDD slightly aghast, she just set it on the pile of hardware and started carrying in equipment. That was unusual and rather frustrating. Carrying the last of the equipment in, she popped open her tricorder and started scanning the replicator. "This Runabout doesn't look to have seen proper maintenance in a long time. What is it you do?"

"That information is on a need to know basis," Nexi said as she headed for her workbench to star fabricating new blades to replace the ones confiscated earlier, "and you don't need to know."

"And we're not keeping logs of things, either... Right? Probably why that case wasn't listed in the manifest... She wanted me to deliver that to you as well." Amelia pointed at a smaller case that had rattled as she carried it in.

"Something like that..." Nexi said in a non-committal tone. She leaned over from where she was working to take the base from the cart of supplies. "What's this?" she asked as she opened the case and peered inside.

Glancing into the case, Amelia gasped a little at the contents. "So I'm a weapons delivery service too now? Seriously... I don't like any of this at all..." Indeed the whole case was full of blades.

"Nice!" Nexi seemed pleased as punch that her weapons had been returned to her. "Don't worry, kid, you were just returning what was already mine," Nexi informed the Andorian woman. Most of the blades were designed for throwing and picked them out one by one, flipping them in her hands to test their balance in case they were improperly stored and thus warped. "If it bothers you so much, I'll tell the Captain to not send you if she needs to deliver questionable content to me."

"Oh no, I wouldn't dream of complaining." Amelia said sarcastically as she ripped out a few fried replicator parts, looking them over and wondering what kind of power surge caused so much damage. "There'd be no record of it, now would there?"

"No, there's wouldn't," Nexi said in agreement as she began to clean her blades and put them away. "But you would know, and so would I. I'll tell the Captain if it bothers you."

Sighing heavily, Amelia paused in her work. "After seeing what these electronics have been through? It would bother me more not knowing if they were fixed right. If i asked you what you tried to do with this replicator, I doubt you would tell me, but I'd still like to know. I might be able to fortify it a bit better."

"Um, I tried to replace the some parts after it stopped working. I got it working for a while, but the food never tasted right, then it just quit altogether," Nexi said distractedly as she gave her beloved blades most of her attention. "Oh, and I replaced all the ship's interfaces with Ferengi interfaces, so that mighta caused some problems somewhere along the line..."

Amelia could only facepalm at that. "Yes. Yes it would..." It seemed she had her work cut out for her. Ferengi parts didn't mix well with Federation parts without a proper converter and the plastic melted remains of one told her that this one, and likely the rest, aren't proper. "I might need some help fixing things..."

"Go ahead and get help if you need it," Nexi said with an annoyed sigh. More people? Dammit. "I've had people coming and going since I got here, so what's a few more hands..."

"Actually, since it's your ship, I was hoping you could help me out if you don't mind. Your systems converters were poorly made and little more than plastic so I'd like to at least see that all of them are replaced with real ones." Snapping a few new parts into the replicator, Amelia grabbed her PaDD and from it sent a command for a cool glass of water to the replicator systems themselves. The resulting glass materialized as expected.

"If you say so," Nexi said as she set her weapons aside and joined Amelia by the replicator. "What do you need me to do?" she asked.

Tapping some more on her PaDD, Amelia watched as a small module slowly materialized. Grabbing it, she looked it over, then handed it to Nexi. "Install one of these in place of the converters you're using. I'd start with the panels that don't work right. I'll make a few more, then finish the repairs on the replicator interface. Thankfully, it was just the core parts that were fried and not the power conduits or resolution matrix."

"More, lots more..." Nexi said with a grin as she took the one converter that Amelia gave her. Grabbing her own box of tools, she moved some crates around near her workbench to open up a floor panel. With a ship so small, it didn't have a dedicated engineering section like many runabouts, so she was accessing one of the primary interfaces that controlled her warp assembly under the deck plating. "I'll need several for the cockpit. My navigational display has been acting wonky."

"Then let's see if we can do 10 at a time..." Punching some more up, Amelia watched 9 and a half materialize. Picking up the 10th one and looking it over, it appeared the platform had run out of usable space. "Ok nine at a time it is." Clearing them to the side, she installed one into the replicator system real quick, powering on the controls. Everything seemed to be working properly here now so she tried replicating 9 more. They came out looking just fine and her tricorder confirmed it. "Replicator works now."

"And so does the warp assembly interface," Nexi said as she finished swapping out the converter. "Ha! So that's why my cloaking device fried! Maybe we can actually fix it now," she said with a bit of glee as she removed the ancient device of Klingon origin. If asked, she would never tell how she got her hands on the device, it had been acquired through less than legal means but the device was rightfully hers. She handed it off to Amelia. "Here's a treat. See if you can fix that."

"Oh my..." Looking over the antiquated piece of technology, she felt like she was stepping back in time a bit. "This is an old Klingon shuttle cloak, isn't it? Very nice." She didn't really want to know where it came from - she was just in awe that she had one in her hands and had the chance to work with it. Scanning it with her tricorder, she immediately found the problem. "There's no feedback coupler in your interface, is there? I'll have to repolarize it and rebuild your interface, but yeah I can get this baby working again." At this point she was almost drooling over the piece of tech.

"Do it," Nexi said with a smile. "While you're working on this, I'll be in the cockpit working on my navigational display," she added, grabbing more of the converter units to take to the cockpit.

"Yes, Ma'am." Finally opening her tool kit, Amelia grabbed a tool and started repolarizing the array, one tiny bit at a time. It would take a while, but it was work she could enjoy. "I don't suppose you run this with a Cardassian power coupler, do you?"

"Cardassian? I don't think so. They guy I bought it from said it was Tellarite, but then again what do I know about ship parts," Nexi admitted. She did feel bad that she didn't know that much about how her ship worked or that her ship was in such bad condition, but it couldn't really be helped. "Why? is that a problem?"

"Tellarite? Figures... If you can, replace it with a Cardassian one. They tie into Federation power systems wonderfully well and they're built strong enough to handle three times this baby's power requirements." Amelia explained as she worked.

"Yeah?" Nexi knew where she could get a Cardassian power coupler at a decent price. "I'll do that," she continued, making a mental note. "If you have any other suggestions for replacement parts, let me know and I'll look into it." Of course it would probably be best if all the parts were Federation make since this was originally a Federation runabout, but she would take what she could get.

Finished repolarizing the cloak, she headed to the coupler with a few more tools. "Well, primary systems, I'd stick with Federation. If you need something to handle a lot of something with no backups, go Cardassian. Everything else... Hope you have a pattern for a good converter. Your torpedo launcher is easily swapped out for a small Romulan plasma launcher if you ever want to do that. It would just need a power converter for proper recharge time - the control interfaces are compatible with your Ferengi displays." Amelia rattled off, already familiar with a lot of the shuttle's design. Looking over the spot for the cloak to plug into, she paused in her recitations. "I'm a matter/energy specialist, by the way. During training I got to tear apart and rebuild a similar shuttle with various parts from around the quadrant. I tried to replace the reactor with a Romulan singularity core and all but melted the engines. The sim said it had a chance of doubling output and speed, but I never got a chance to test that."

"No weapons," Nexi called from the cockpit where she was working. "All weapon systems were stripped out when she was decommission and I never saw a reason to install anything when I bought her, but she's still got shields and transporters, though I've done some work on both." She made notes about Amelia's recommended replacement parts. She would definitely start keeping a stock of back-up parts. "And if you handle propulsion, maybe you can help with a problem I've been having lately. 'Star is rated for up to warp 9, but she starts shaking as I approach warp 7.5. I haven't figured out if it's something to do with the engines or the structural integrity field." Or hell, for all she knew the deflector dish was out of alignment. Nexi wasn't an Engineer, what the hell did she know!

"There's an old trick to that. Your engines are technically built for warp 6 or so. Going over produces energy feedback and if you shunt that feedback into shields and structural integrity, she'll smooth out." Finishing her work on the cloak systems, Amelia plugged it back in and powered up the interface. "That should be working fine again. If you want, I think I can get the equipment replicator to make a few of the original phaser banks."

"Are you sure about that? About the engines?" Nexi asked, coming out of the cockpit to find Amelia. "I know most shuttles of this size are only designed for a max of warp six, but the fleet yard engineer that sold her to me said the Orion class was designed to achieve warp 9. She should be able to keep up with most full-sized ships." But she was making more mental notes, taking in everything this woman was telling her. Didn't matter what some fleet yard salesman told her, she had every reason to believe Amelia, the woman seemed to know her way around an engine. "And if you're done, think we could run some tests on the cloak?"

Waving her hand dismissively at the mention of a fleetyard salesman, Amelia scoffed and waved her antennae in an amused manner. "Whatever they told you is a lie. The official Starfleet specs are a lie as well. That trick I told you has been in use since the NX-01 first left Earth and made contact with my people. If your injectors are solid and you keep your intermix chamber cool, it'll get you up faster than the Hera can go." Shaking her head, she just walked out of the ship and looked over the hull, waiting for Nexi to activate the cloak.

Nexi accepted what the Andorian woman said as truth. It made sense and she did seem to know what she was talking about. she returned to the cockpit and activated the cloaking device. She patched into the Hera's comm system to ask the young Crewman, "How's she look?"

Smiling at how well the ship vanished, Amelia started scanning for anything with her tricorder. It read that there wasn't even air inside the cloak - just empty space. "Don't see a thing. It even cloaked a bit of the deck plating."

"Amelia, you have just made my day," Nexi said over the comm with a smile, then lowered the cloak. She'd want to do more extensive tests to see if the cloak could adequately conceal her ship's energy signature while in motion, as well as a myriad of other things she's had learned to work around with her years of dealing with it in its faulty state, but for now she was just so glad it was working! The extra tests could wait for later. For now, they still had more repairs to do!

Closing up her tricorder, Amelia headed back inside the ship. "Anything else before I install the new shower?" she asked as she started opening the crates for the portable unit.

"There's always something that needs fixing on my 'Star, but I guess we're done for now," Nexi said as she helped Amelia unload the crates. "Whoa, you weren't kidding you said you were gonna fix my shower," Nexi commented when she saw all the equipment for the self recycling water system that would eventually go into the small bathroom. "You sure all this junk is gone fit in there?"

"It should. I've seen it in smaller areas. It's modular so most of it can be routed into the crawlway overhead." Amelia said as she unpacked the boxes.

"If you say so," Nexi replied dubiously. she would believe it when she saw it.

Carrying the main unit and a plasma torch to the restroom, Amelia opened the ceiling access and hefted the empty tank and recycler through it. Deftly, she jumped up and pulled herself through the hole, pushing the unit out of the way. "Perfect. Plenty of room and even space to get by it when we're done." Using the plasma torch, she started cutting access ports for the hoses above the shower.

"When I'm done with my job here, I'm paying a certain fleet yard Engineer a visit. He said I couldn't do none of this stuff," Nexi said as she helped get everything situated.

"I wouldn't be too hard on them. Fleetyards are full of book engineers. They can tell you part numbers and circuit flow, but if you want to know which way to plug something in without blowing something up, you need a field or bench engineer." Amelia said as she finished cutting the holes. Locking the module in place, she connected the external power feed to the EPS tap right next to it. As soon as power was applied, everything came online just fine and it started replicating water on its own. "Want to start feeding the hoses up through the holes, Ma'am?"

"Yeah, sure," Nexi replied and start unwinding the hoses to feed them to Amelia. "See this is why I ain't an engineer. Way too complicated for me." But ask her how to peel someone's skin off without killing them and she was all over that!

"That may be so, but whatever it is you do, I'm sure I'd be horrible at it. This sort of thing is my passion and I grew up doing it." Amelia called down from the ceiling.

"Fair enough," Nexi said with a chuckle. And she wouldn't wish her childhood on anyone here.